Prayer Seffield Old Univ Cu 4.3.78 — George Verwer

Well, I appreciate this opportunity to worship together with you. I believe the highest calling we have as believers is to worship Him and to praise Him. That's what we were created for. We weren't created so that someone later on could evangelize us.

We were created to worship Him, but because we made a mess, we had to be redeemed. Sometimes on the ship, where I lived for a few years, we spent many hours just worshiping Him, praising Him. I'd love to be able to teach you some of the new songs of worship that some of our people have written.

And our hearts are just more and more convinced about this. In fact, one of the main books I chose to bring along this evening to mention to you is a book on this whole subject of worship, the most radical book on worship and intercession that perhaps has been produced in many years.

Worship, Intercession, and the Believer’s Future Reign

You may not agree with everything, but I think you will see something of the significance of intercession and worship as you read this book, Destined for the Throne. You see, the Word of God teaches that we someday, who are believers, will rule with Him.

We will rule with Jesus Christ. Those who suffer for Him will rule with Him. And there are many other verses. So it's been wonderful that you have taken this time to worship and to praise the Lord. It's a very important night for me because it was 23 years ago tonight that I came to know the Lord Jesus Christ as my Savior.

So it's my birthday. And... Happy birthday to you! That's enough. But it fits in because I've been asked to speak on the subject of prayer. And I came to the Lord because of an elderly lady who prayed for me for three years and who interceded for the grammar school that I was attending for 15 years.

And the whole of O .M. was born out of that lady's prayers. By the way, I'm not the leader of O .M. in Europe. That's actually Jonathan McCrosty. The leader of O .M. in Britain is Peter Maiden, who many of you know.

And I'm somewhere in between there or around there. My job being the task of fellowshipping with all the leaders around the world and trying to figure out what they're doing. But perhaps I could just begin with my testimony in order to lay a foundation for this talk tonight and as a testimony of just how God does answer prayer.

A Testimony of Conversion Through Persistent Prayer

My grandfather was from Glasgow, and he was a drunk. I hope that doesn't offend any of our friends from north of the border. My other grandfather was from the Netherlands. He was an atheist. And I was not reared in a Christian home.

I was reared in a very materialistic home. Though my parents were good people in some ways, they didn't know Christ. I became religious because I was interested in various things, including the girls that were in the church.

I became a president of the young people's organization in the church, but I didn't know Christ. And this lady began to pray for me. She had prayed for this school for 15 years, and she not only prayed that people would be converted in that school, but she prayed that they would go all over the world spreading the gospel.

She had an enormous vision, a totally unknown lady, an enormous vision of the world. And that was her prayer. All of her own children, about four or five, became outstanding and wonderful Christians. One of them already with the Lord after serving in the Congo.

Another one, one of the outstanding Christian violinists in the world today. So she didn't sacrifice her own family on the altar of the world mission vision, but she had both. And she walked with God, and she knew the reality of prayer.

I went into that grammar school, a rather wild, materialistic, lustful character, and she targeted in, zeroed in on me in her praying. And three years later, at a Billy Graham meeting in New York City, I surrendered to Jesus Christ.

People always say, well, that's just emotion. There may be someone here tonight that doesn't know the Lord Jesus, and you have doubts about all this. Well, you're looking at a doubting Thomas, first class.

I'm still a doubter. One thing I know, Jesus Christ radically invaded my life on that night. Changed it, still changing it, 23 years later. I hardly think of that as an emotional experience. It's a rather long time for one emotion to last, especially in someone as unstable as I am.

God is real, and God answers prayer. The most normal thing for us to do as Christians and as God's creatures is to learn how to talk with Him, just as a son learns how to talk with his father. I have three children, one of them 17, and one of the great joys that I've had in my experience with my 17-year-old is we've learned to communicate, to share, to discuss things, all kinds of things, from masturbation to homosexuality to horses.

He just had one fall on him, by the way, and broke his leg in two places. And this is very meaningful. It's also very normal. And so it is with our Heavenly Father. We can come to Him, we can talk to Him, we can share with Him.

Prayer as a Lifelong Ministry

And prayer is a very practical thing, it's a very real thing. It was when I was 18, approximately shortly after my conversion, just before I went up to university, as you say here, that I dedicated my life to prayer.

I never wanted to start an organization. I was just a nobody. I didn't have a high IQ. I had a lot of problems, especially lust, impatience, pride, and about ten other areas of difficulty. But God convicted me as a young person that the first thing in life was to learn to pray.

So I made this the main priority in my whole life, to learn to pray. I started nights of prayer with a few other students. We started to pray for that high school. Within the next one year and a half, 200 students in one of the most ungodly, drunken high schools in the New York City area surrendered their lives to Jesus Christ.

And some of those students are serving Christ in many parts of the world today. Also, among other things, OM was born out of that situation and soon began to spread until today. There's about 1 ,000 plus of us in OM full-time around the world, 2 ,000 to 2 ,500 in the summer.

One lady knew how to pray. Just think of the possibility tonight. Some of you will learn how to pray. Some of you are already learning. George Mueller, by the end of his life, had 30 ,000 answers to prayer.

One man. He was a German. Came to Britain as a missionary to this pagan country. And still going strong at 80. Picked up some of the British stubbornness and lived a long life. Still praying and winning great victories at 80 years of age.

30 ,000 answers to prayer. How are you doing? Specific answers. He wrote many of them down. Keep any records? Answers to prayer? Some people in their prayers specialize in being vague, lest they have to be pinned down on expecting something to actually happen.

And that could be perhaps embarrassing. Like one lady who prayed after reading the prayer on faith moving mountains. She prayed for this mountain near her home that it would be moved. She went out to look and she saw the mountain.

It was still there. She said to her friend, Well, I knew it wasn't real faith. Now, before I go any further, I would like to say a word about the books in realization that as I speak about books, I will turn someone off.

There's always someone here in England who doesn't like salesmanship. There's always someone in every audience who doesn't like Americans. What to do? I just so believe in books. I brought two little cases with me.

So little I couldn't even lift them, so I'm glad your men met me on the platform. But I believe in Christian literature because I would probably have deserted the Christian faith and become an agnostic if it wasn't for Christian books.

I went to a college where every professor was against the evangelical cause, including the Bible professor, who was totally immersed in this German higher criticism that our friend Robert referred to.

But somehow, through books, I managed to see there were some other viewpoints. By the way, probably one of the greatest problems in Sweden, where I've been a few dozen times, we, by the way, get a higher number of recruits from Sweden per capita than we do from the British Isles.

They may not all be university students, but God is working in Sweden. Certainly not in the universities as much as here, but in other ways. But one of the great weaknesses is a lack of in-depth literature in the Swedish language.

And this is something we have in the English language that we just should be so grateful to God for. An unbelievable heritage of Christian literature that can answer almost any question that you can conceive of that may come against you in your faith.

In fact, since I specialize in books, if you wrote to me on any question, I probably could recommend at least ten books on that subject. So my life, my Christian life, has greatly helped through books, and I, therefore, always recommend books wherever I go.

Christian Books, Theology, and Moral Formation

I want to recommend this book, fitting into our subject of prayer, Knowing God by J .I. Packer. Now, we would tend to think, because this book is very popular, widely read, that everyone would have it.

But you see, you have new students in every year. New people being converted. This is one of the most popular books among students. So just for my own interest, I'd like to know how many of you have already read it or read half of it.

Raise your hand. Good. Still less than 50%. So there's still room for some of you to load out your copy of Knowing God to the poorer student and to the student who may happen to be on a grant. Most of you.

You can get a copy at either one of the book tables. Knowing God. And then if you want to approach this whole exact same subject from the other side of the theological fence, you may want to look at Tozer's book called Knowledge of the Holy.

A book, again, on the attributes of God. There's nothing more important than our knowledge of God, our theology of God Himself. Especially when it comes to prayer. In fact, our whole Christian life will be built on the foundation of our knowledge of God and His attributes.

And that's why I strongly recommend both of those books. Some people face intellectual problems. The more traditional Calvinistic approach is that we should not worry too much about apologetics, especially for anyone who's unconverted.

But perhaps many of you are not from that approach. Even if you are, I'm sure you'll have an open mind. But I believe there is a legitimate need for apologetics. Even this kind. A bit American, some people would say.

But Josh McDowell's book, Evidence Demands a Verdict, is one of the fastest selling books in the university scene in Britain today. Whenever it's available. And it is almost impossible to keep it in stock.

This man has led literally thousands and thousands of university students to Christ, including a fair number of PhDs and all the rest. And he's a man you'll want to read. When you get done with this, he has more evidence than Demands a Verdict.

An equally large volume. And he's done a lot of research. And I think you'll find it a helpful book. May not be your approach. But I know a lot of people who have been helped through it. I'm very grateful that soon InterVarsity will be publishing a book called Eros Defiled.

You can write that down and I hope you will take notes. I know as students you must by Saturday be tired of taking notes. But it may be helpful. But if you write down that book, I believe it's going to be one of the most unique books published by InterVarsity here in Britain.

Eros Defiled. I'm reading it right now. The best book on the subject of morality I've ever read. And I've read about 15 on that subject. Eros Defiled by John White. Whole chapter on homosexuality. One of the best.

Whole chapter on masturbation. Almost unheard of in Christian books. Very good chapter on whether to go to bed or not just before you're married. What is marriage? Do you have to marry the girl that you have sex with before marriage?

Every conceivable subject is discussed in Eros Defiled. So I challenge you. Meanwhile, to prepare for that book, you can read Roy Hessian's book on the problem of morals and immorality among Christians.

Subject not too many people want to talk about. An aid to deeper repentance of the forgotten factors of sexual misbehavior. I'm convinced the number one problem among students in the Christian unions is their morality.

And I've been 15 years lecturing in the British universities. In fact, every week for the last two months. And a lot of that involves correspondence, some of which has gone on 15 years. The only thing I can think of that gives more difficulty than lust is pride.

I can't think of anything. Materialism runs a close third. And for some people, of course, bypasses lust. With women, I might just adjust my statistic to say that worry does generally bypass lust. Though they have a gift in the area of lust as well.

And it usually, together with worry, gets many of them in difficulty. I would say many of the reasons, one of the main reasons students, after three years in a Christian union, two years later have deserted the Christian faith and become agnostics, and that has happened to hundreds, hundreds of Christian union students, is because they got this very high standard that is preached to us in the evangelical cause.

They tried to keep it, especially tried to stay moral. It worked all right when they were, you know, in the midst of many other Christians who could encourage them. But it was not always even there. That when they got out of the little evangelical hotbed that they were being reared in and met some of the real women who are crawling around planet Earth, and men, it didn't work, and down they went morally, which wasn't the greatest problem.

The greatest problem was they didn't know what to do when they fell. They were so shattered, their ego was so broken, their image was so destroyed, it led them further into depression, discouragement, and then in some cases to the conviction that Christianity doesn't work.

Because God didn't keep them from this. They prayed to be kept from this 488 times, and then they fell, and they blamed it on God. And so I am very interested in this subject of morality, and I praise God for this book by Roy Hesschen who has dealt with so many people, including missionaries, the greatest problem on the mission field, perhaps again next to pride and one or two other things, would be morality.

Unbelievable, unbelievable. We're all in it. Billy Graham says we're a generation of sex gluttons. The church may not talk about it much, but the Bible has over 300 verses on the subject of sex. And if we're going to even begin to speak on the whole counsel of God, we better get God's sex book open and read it and find out where we're going and where we are.

And if we're not living in victory in this area, Roy Hesschen has the answer. The cross, Jesus, the lordship of Christ, and I recommend that book. I don't generally choose my subject when I go to the Christian Union, otherwise I would choose to preach on sex.

Instead, I get chosen to preach on dull subjects like missions and not really dull, but it certainly does frighten a lot of people away. A great book on Christian leadership is by Oswald Sanders, the former leader of the OMF.

The present leader is Michael Griffiths. On Tuesday night, I had my heart challenged as I listened to Michael Griffiths at the Thanksgiving service for the 12 missionaries who were just killed in Thailand.

What a meeting that was. Before Michael Griffiths had this job, Oswald Sanders had it, and this is the greatest book on leadership I've ever read. I recommend it to you. We also have our prayer cards.

A Global Vision for Missions and Intercession

Some of you have already seen these. Fifty-two of the most needy nations in the world put on cards that you can carry in your pocket, use them to redeem the time, build up a knowledge of these mission fields.

Some of these countries have no church. Some of them have no missionaries. Some of them have no believers, like Mauritania, no believers. Libya's a little better, three believers. Tunisia's climbing high, 14 believers.

Afghanistan's ahead of Tunisia with 18 believers. That's in the entire population, nationals. The average Christian doesn't know these things. And we want Christians to know a little more about the mission field.

And these cards are being wonderfully used. Here's Mongolia. I wonder what the situation is there. There's four prayer requests on the back of the card. There's a map on the front. And then the basic figures.

There are no known believers in the whole country of Mongolia among the nationals. What a challenge. And we try to distribute these cards together with these maps of the world to get people into intelligent prayer.

We're challenging all of our British friends and Americans, Scandinavians, anybody, to take this little map and to hang it over the front of their television. And to spend a little more time interceding and a little less time breeding poison in their own minds.

So we hope you'll take one of our world maps and make use of it. For everyone who takes a book at either book table, I won't even tell you which one's mine, you might guess. Not really mine. But for anyone who buys a book, we give you a book free.

Either this book or, when we run out, unfortunately, one of my own books. Not a very good book called Come Live, Die, but it's got a lot of good quotations from other people's books. I'm not going to be speaking about OM tonight.

Maybe Peter Maiden has told you something about that. But we do have some literature about India, which is especially on my heart, since British people can go there without a visa and stay there. And about Turkey, one of the priority fields of our work, where there are 38 million people and less than 50 known converted Turks.

And I hope that you will take advantage of some of this material. And I have one prayer request. And that's that you would pray for this second ship tonight. She is on her maiden voyage. If I was honest with you, I could tell you the bouts I have with fear, anxiety, and everything else you can think of.

I am not a man of great faith. And when I think of this old ship coming up now into northern Europe, it's probably along the coast of Spain, I just tremble. Because I know that God does allow disasters.

He allowed those 12 missionaries to be killed. And yet, it seems to me the last thing that God would want at present is for 160 people to be in a disaster on that ship. Yet, as we come in these difficult waters through the Straits of Dover and up to Brennan, we really would like your prayers.

On the maiden voyage of the MV Dulles, most people do not even know this ship has left Genoa. We bought this ship cash, as we don't believe in borrowing money. The Lord brought in an answer to prayer on the 28th of December.

It's a ship that has room for 400 people in cabins, 600 people in her preaching lounges, and an exhibition on her huge after deck, after we over cover the swimming pool, for three times as many books as we have on Lagos.

Lagos, by the way, the first ship is in Calcutta. They've already sold 200 ,000 rupees of books in a massive citywide campaign in that great nation. We spoke with them on the telephone this afternoon, just before coming here, and they would appreciate prayer for Calcutta.

We're seeing people come to Christ almost every day in the open air ministry. And flocks of people, thousands and thousands, are flocking to the ship. People are asking, in some cases, how they can come to know Christ in this needy land of India, which is much upon our hearts.

And then lastly, my own book just published last month, A Revolution of Love and Balance. I mention this because I'll probably say some extreme things that will upset some of you. Not so much on a message about prayer, but it is difficult to speak just one night, and this book will help balance out some of the things I say.

A very interesting little book that has been on my heart. Let's just pray before we look into the Word of God. Not that what I've said isn't part of the message, all part of it. Let's pray. Lord, we need your help.

I need your help. I feel so inadequate and weak. I know enough about miscommunication to never preach again. And I know enough about all the different temperaments and types of people that we can find in an audience like this to just fall on my face and say, Lord, what can I do?

Lord, speak to us about prayer. Speak to us about our own lives. Don't let our prejudices, don't let my own personality kinks hinder what you want to say tonight. We ask in Jesus' name, Amen. Now, it's an unusual night.

I even have some notes. I wrote these down about 20 minutes ago during one of the announcements because I didn't want to go astray. My message is called Foundations for a Prayer Ministry. I believe God is calling every believer into a prayer ministry.

There are many scriptures I would like to read, but perhaps we could begin in the book of Matthew. Some verses that I think are very familiar to you, starting at Matthew 6 .36. By the way, that's my favorite worship hymn, Seek ye first the kingdom of God.

If we weren't already running a little over time, I'd have you all sing it. Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you. Be therefore not anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for the things of itself.

Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. Then going down to verse 7 in chapter 7. Ask, and it shall be given you. Seek, and ye shall find. Knock, and it shall be opened unto you. For everyone that asketh receiveth, and he that seeketh findeth, and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.

For what man is there of you, whom if his son ask bread will he give him a stone? Or if he asketh fish will he give him a serpent? If ye, then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father who is in heaven give good things to them that ask Him?

Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them. For this is the law and the prophets. Over to chapter 9. Last four verses. Chapter 9. Verse 35. And Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every sickness and every disease among the people.

But when He saw the multitudes, He was moved with compassion on them, because they were faint and were scattered abroad as sheep having no shepherd. Then saith He unto His disciples, The harvest truly is plenteous, but the laborers are few.

Pray ye, therefore, the Lord of the harvest, that He will send forth laborers into His harvest. How extremely clear. The ministry of prayer, the ministry of asking for that which we need, that which the church needs, that which is the will of God, the ministry of praying forth laborers out into the harvest field.

It's very, very clear. When I was a young Christian, I made a study on prayer, went through the whole Bible, marking every verse on the subject of prayer. It's a book of prayer. It's a book about prayer.

It's a book with many prayers. And yet, so often today, this is the weakest area in our local churches and in our own lives. One of the leading Christian magazines some months ago asked me to write an article.

I'm not a writer. I can dictate a thousand letters to individuals easier than write one chapter in a book. But anyway, I was so concerned about this subject of prayer that I wrote this article, What Happened to the Prayer Meeting?

To my amazement, it's being published in magazines all over the world because Christian leaders are aware that this is certainly one of the greatest problems in the church today. And some churches no longer have a prayer meeting.

And if they have one, hardly anyone comes. In my surveys of the Christian unions here in Britain also, and many executive CU presidents have expressed this to me, that they can't get the prayer life really the way it should be.

I hope Sheffield is an exception to that. Even in some of our big Christian unions, unbelievably few show up to the prayer meetings. And this is not right. A pastor in one of the largest churches in southern England just went out to minister in our work in India.

We have about 200 men and women in India now. So we find gifted men, pastors, teachers, who can go out and teach the Word of God. As our main work is not evangelism, but it's grounding people in the Word of God, building them up as disciples.

We believe that as men grow and become mature in Christ, that evangelism will flow spontaneously out from them. And he came back. And his greatest burden now in his church is to make the main meeting in the church next to his breaking of bread the prayer meeting.

And God is moving in that church. They've sent thousands of pounds out to missions, even in the past few weeks. And they're seeing tremendous things happen in their prayer meeting where sometimes up to 200 or 300 in Britain are gathering in the prayer meeting just to intercede.

I believe that we have not begun to see what God could do in this nation if we will learn to pray, if we will learn to persevere in prayer. There are many great books on this subject. There are a few actually on the table.

There's one I'll be happy to send to you as a free gift called Power Through Prayer by E .M. Bounds. If I had my literature van with me tonight, I'd have a lot more books. And I'm ashamed of this little display I have.

But all of our people are in the midst of a retreat where I was supposed to be as well. 140 OMers full-time here in Britain are all down in the Whitcliffe Center this weekend. And so I only have these few books.

But I would like to see that book go out. And if you want one, I'll be happy to send it to you as a free gift. Power Through Prayer by E .M. Bounds. Now there's a lot that I would like to say to in a sense try to motivate you to pray.

Telling you illustrations about great men of prayer, Brainerd and Hudson Taylor and so many others. Giving some quotations from some of these men. Like Samuel Chadwick who said the one main strategy of Satan will be to keep you from prayer.

And how Satan doesn't fear prayerless study and prayerless work. A lot of other prayerless things. But he trembles when we pray. But to some degree I'm just not going to be able to cover everything tonight.

And so I'm going to assume that many of you want to pray and you want to learn how to pray and you're hungry for God and that's why you're here tonight. And so I want to share with you what I call the foundations for a ministry of prayer.

Assuming that you want to get started and you have to begin somewhere. By the way the greatest book on prayer perhaps ever written is by a Norwegian, Hallowsby's book on prayer. And I hope your CU book table will have many of those if not tonight, in the future.

It's another great intervarsity book. You know I believe that you're the publishing group Intervarsity connected with the Christian Unions is one of the greatest publishing groups in the world today. And it's just a thrill to be able to distribute their books by the tens of thousands all over the world.

These books by Michael Green. You must be joking. That great book, I'm thinking of the one where the man is on the chair and then he's free. The cover was designed by a friend of mine about Jesus spells freedom.

Runaway world. It's just so tremendous to have these books. I hope you're using these books in evangelism. You can have, my method of witnessing is very low profile. I'm not sort of the hard driving person.

I am on the saints but not on the sinners. My profile with the sinners is very low. I just sort of talk and feel them out, see where they are, try to show some love, maybe carry their bag or do something and then come in as they ask questions.

It's a terrific method to witness. Just get people to ask questions. One method I do is carry a Christian sex book and stick it on the top of my pile. I have one in my case. This book, Eros Defiled. I got an advanced copy.

Just put that, just carry one of those around the university. Eros Defiled on the top of your books and you know, you'll find that people will be asking questions. Of course, some of you girls may get in trouble but the question method is one of my favorite methods to get people asking questions and to share with them the message of Jesus Christ.

But I want to talk and avoid side tracks and talk about some of these foundations for a prayer ministry. The first foundation I have is that you need to make sure that you know Jesus Christ personally.

Now that's pretty basic, isn't it? But there may be someone here tonight. You're trying to pray. You're not getting very far and one of the reasons, the main reason, is that you've never prayed for your own life and for your own soul or whatever terminology you want to use to be saved, to know God personally, to be converted.

It's not just pagans from the jungles that need to be converted. Sophisticated, semi-civilized pagans in America and Britain need to be converted. Often in Britain, I have people, not everybody is as friendly as you all look tonight, who tell me to go back to where I came from.

I'm one of those immigrants, of course, the entire national front chasing me. I understand they want to get 400 running or 500 running in the next election and somebody else is thinking of putting up the price.

They feel they won't be able to afford it. But as someone who immigrated here 15 years ago, still, of course, as you can see, you haven't learned the language. I can tell you I have very seldom found an Englishman that loves this country as much as I do.

And one of the curses on Britain today is a lack of appreciation for your own country. You're most of you are a bunch of spoiled people who have lived in one of the greatest countries too long, who know very little about living in other places and therefore don't appreciate what God in His mercy has allowed you to have in this country.

And I say that with deep feeling because I believe that God wants to do much more in this country. And I believe it's a hindrance to what God wants to do when there are so many people running around moaning and complaining and griping about everything.

I'm always on the trains meeting the British rail complainers, these, these, oh, I can't even describe some of them. Most of them have never traveled in any other train system in any other part of the world.

I've traveled in 20 train systems in most countries in the world apart from South America and Africa. But out Asia, India, I've been on almost every main line in India. And I tell you, British rail is heaven.

That would be, of course, slight American exaggeration. So there may be someone here who's never been born again. You've never been converted and, of course, you can't pray. God will not hear you. Now, I've heard exceptions to that.

Some unconverted person felt that God heard his prayer. It could be in the process of bringing that man to himself. I would not say God can never hear and answer the prayer of a sinner. But step one is to know that you're converted.

We have that great verse in 1 John, I think it's chapter 5, where it says we should know. These things are written that ye may know that ye have eternal life. Isn't that great? It's great to know where we're going.

I wouldn't want to go to sleep tonight without knowing that I am going to be with God. Now, I am not a person of great faith. I don't pretend to understand heaven. I'm not a person sort of yearning to die.

At this stage of my Christian maturity, and I have a long way to go, I've learned yearning to live as long as I can, especially if I can stay in Britain and travel through the Welsh mountains and the Scottish mountains and go rock climbing in the devil's kitchen and all kinds of other experiences I've had.

But I know that that's not God's way. I know that I have to grow in faith and be able to say, I can't say it yet, as Paul said, to live is Christ and to die is gain. Well, actually, I can say it. I especially said it a lot as a young Christian until I got a few close calls with death.

Then I started to play a different tune. And then I got married. And I don't want to leave her. It's just getting exciting. Eighteen years marriage. You know, I'm a very slow learner in that area. And it's just getting so wonderful.

And to me, life is tremendous. And that can be a problem. It's people who suffer and people who have been constantly hazarding their lives for the sake of the gospel and people who have been through all the agony that this life can be, that often begin to just pine to be with God.

And I've met people like that. And that's my goal. But it is good. Even though my faith in heaven and understanding of it is small, I have that great assurance that's where I'm going. Someone once helped me by saying that heaven is just being with God.

And if you have a lot of trouble with that, don't read six books on the subject of heaven. Just by faith, take it. You're going to be with God. He will know how to handle you. Do you think God will know how to handle you when you get there?

I think so. And it's wonderful to know that when we die, we're going to be with God. Some of my closest friends have been killed already. And I had to speak at their funeral. I tell you, if there's anything that ever shook me in my life was speaking at the funeral of two or three of my closest friends.